Of nipping in the bud

In the cliche-ridden world of popular discourse, none is more urgent then the one about "nipping things in the bud". I am referring to the reprehensible utterances and behaviour that have been observed at the McCain/Palin rallies. Ostensibly in response to statements associating Senator Obama with Ayers, supporters of these candidates have called for the most unimaginable actions against him. Unimaginable, that is, in civil society, the kind we intend to put before the world as an example for people around the world to emulate, as the 'shining light', as the 'beacon on the hill', and as one candidate put it "as a force for good".

The irony of this situation is that, the very same people who are questioning Senator Obama's integrity and judgment for associating with someone, whose actions 40 years ago were indeed questionable, are themselves associating with people who are demanding actions against him that are reprehensible today. Anybody who claims to denounce terrorism in any form, would disassociate themselves from people who advocate it, in however minor a form, particularly against a civil servant of Senator Obama's standing, whose only issue at the moment seems to be a secondary and rather distant association.

Are the candidates who associate with those who call for violence today not more guilty by direct association with such people? Well, I admit that is somwhat of a stretch. We do not know of any direct associations between the candidates and these nasty elements in the crowd. But by any measure of civil propriety in our society, these are indeed lumpen elements. That is indeed what one should call them, whatever be the nature of one's political belief. That is the least one would expect from someone who intends to lead this nation and the world. For, if they cannot see things for what they are, happening in front of their very noses, then, how can we expect them to see and respond to more serious threats as they emerge in remoter parts of the world.

It is indeed well known, that these calls for violence are seeds of venomous ideas that can disseminate very rapidly if left unattended. We should be smart enough now to know that there are certain things that are unacceptable under any circumstances, and the response against such acts must be appropriate and swift. Civil discourse is appropriate to use with people who have accepted it as their mode of resolving issues. For those others however, who have not yet signed-on, we must emphatically deny participation in conversations about our future. We must make it clear in no uncertain terms that, they will not only be ignored, but excluded and rejected, even if the price of that exclusion results in a loss in the election. That would be a worthy of a statesperson leading a "force for good".

Unless of course, the candidates indeed wish to include the lumpen elements in their fold. They then should know that they have deliberately and wantonly invited the first cancerous cells into the body politic. Not only should they strenously exclude it from their party, but now that they know it exists, the responsibilities of leadership demand that it takes an active role in identifying these elements and dealing with them appropriately.

I believe that the violence we experience in our lives is the violence which already exists within us in some form. The intensity of our hatred and dark thoughts comes back to hurt us multiplied several times over. That is what Gandhi meant, when he said "we must be the change we want to see in the world".

Never before has it been more urgent for the world to respond firmly and nonviolently to the intractable threats that are confronting us. But while we take on the larger challenges, we have to begin by defusing these ideas in our own minds and among us here, now.

Senator McCain can become a great leader in posterity, even if he never were to become President, by disassociating himself from all who foster, sponsor and encourage such seeds of hatred and violence to sprout. He needs to nip these ideas in their buds - now!

Among friends

It was hard to keep up with the resolve of writing regularly. There have been so many things that have been happening in the world since I wrote last that it was certainly not for a dearth of things to write about, that I did not. I wanted to react to the VP debate, and then the second Presidential debate. I wanted to write about the financial crisis, and its implications. It seemed like what I wanted to say, was perhaps no different from what was already being said by so many people in so many different ways. It is so difficult to sift through all these voices and find that unique reaction that is just yours. Or perhaps there does not exist any such thing, for we are all listening and processing so much information from so many different directions. I still think I will write about all the events and happenings of the last week, for they are too substantial to ignore. We are at a true transformational moment in the history of the world. There are too many disruptions, too many important trends coming together at this juncture, and how we deal with them and what we make of them will determine the course of history for the rest of my life for sure. Hmmm, that sounds way to heavy. I think I will come back to it a little later.





Right now, it is also the second day of talking to so many of my old theater friends from Bangalore, after a gap of over two decades. Some of them I have been in touch with. Others I have not spoken to or corresponded with during this entire period. It is wonderful to make contact with them again. They bring back fond memories of wonderful times. They make me conscious of the time that has passed. So many of us have daughters who have just entered college or on the verge of doing so. Is that just coincidence? But, it also brought home sharply how much this means to me and I am sure to all of us, perhaps not in the same way.





It brings me back to why there is something about this VP choice that is so bothersome. And, that is what I want to write about. Why is it, that when the issue of the rights and role of women has been so important to me, that I feel that this is not a good choice for either the country or the world and even for women.

Today is Gandhi Jayanti. His Birth Anniversary. He would have been 139 years old, I think. Wonder what would he think of the world today, or India. Some people are saying he was right, about several things. I admire the way he understood how to stimulate large social groups with simple levers. Any way - he still continues to touch us. People often quote his, "If you want to be the change you want to see in this world, be it!". Some think about him because of the movie, and some think that all bald Indian men with round glasses remind them of Gandhi - which keeps the memory alive for me! I think it is sad then to write about the temple stampede in Jodhpur, on this day.

It is apparently the third such this year. The only too frequent incidents of terrorism have made the people extremely sensitive and understandably so. When things were less scary, one could do without well designed spaces that had proper exit routes in cases of emergency. People would have normally taken care of others. Just as they do now on our chaotic roads. Now, however, we might need to think again, particularly for those places where large numbers gather, which of course means a lot of places indeed. Is Indian life still precious enough for us to act?

Some time ago, I had the displeasure of riding on a tourist pleasure boat ride in Panjim. They had crammed over 800 people on this rickety contraption that should perhaps have not allowed more than maybe 200 people at most. There was no space to move on the deck, and should something unfortunate have happened, we were staring in the face of a massive catastrophe. I am sure there were a lot of people who should have been looking who were not, or rather had shut their eyes to what was being done in the name of commerce and tourism.

If only the ride had been otherwise worth it. The entertainment, a term which was a stretch to apply to this cacophonous, uncomfortable, distressing, anxiety-filled hour, was of the lowest standards imaginable. But then, who was I to complain. The rest of the 799 people danced on that cramped deck, and I got to see a new India. A new class had found access, and liberated themselves from whatever old mores had constrained them. And this is what they found good. It would be quite a while before they would start demanding better standards of safety, and respect for other people's rights. As I have learned, with India, it is only a matter of time.

We do hope that tragedies like this stampede wake people up, and as has often happened before, public opinion forces authorities to do something, at least for a while. Looking from the outside, it seems like an impossible task. The systems are overloaded from every perspective, and there are just not enough resources to do things in the ideal way. Is that an excuse? What about public safety? What about the preciousness of human lives? It would be nice if we acknowledged that there was a lot to be done yet, and not gloat, as we seem to have become prone to do.

I had another scary ride that year in a car from Delhi to Agra on a new multi-lane highway, that people seemed very proud of. The less I talk about it perhaps the better, but there were two things I think I could not ignore. On one stretch, a car was coming towards us in our traffic lane at highway speeds. Unimaginable elsewhere perhaps! Scared as I was, and surprised, I explained it away as a fault of the overall design of the system. This guy, did not want to drive several kilometers the proper way, when he could see where he wanted to go, and there was a nice paved road in front of his nose, and would save him much fuel too perhaps. Then there was the fact that outside the highway, the road conditions were pathetic. There was a class system right there if there was one! And why would the local taxpayer not use something better. Oh well! Ultimately, I still think it is poor architecture and design. We still have a long way to go.

If only we acknowledged it. If only we did not gloat!

Perhaps next year, there will be fewer such stampedes, even while we know there will be more of us visiting our gods here on earth.

The Wall street crisis makes me wonder about the question of foresight. Could we have seen this coming? One thing is clear - having access to some of the most detailed information and sophisticated analysis, such as what Bernanke, Paulson and in turn President Bush have, certainly does not seem to help. This of course assumes that they were not trying to hide anything, the truth of which we will only know after some time. Someone is most likely to demonstrate, retrospectively, that they had all the information they needed, or that they did not look for something they should have. We do know that these people have access to the best information sources, that they also have supposedly honed their skills professionally to understand the behavior and dynamics of such complex entities as markets, industries and economies. Perhaps they do not have the required cognitive complexity. This is particularly interesting, since the nation is also considering putting someone in a position where she might have to comprehend such complexity, and has not demonstrated adequately the cognitive complexity to do so. So, one important question that springs to mind, is whether the collective cognitive capabilities of these decision making bodies is somehow undermined by the people who lead them.

Well then, even if a few people did not see it coming, the market is supposed to have worked. After all, according to theories of the market, the stock prices of all these about to fail enterprises should have reflected the fact that they were headed to failure. If the market had failed to predict successfully in the case of just one or two cases, one could have understood the anomaly. However, in this case, the market sytematically failed to tell us what was coming. It would be interesting to explore if there were prediction markets somewhere, which did indeed foresee this coming. Now, in the case of the market, there is far more diversity in the number of people involved, than in the case of the individual enterprises, or the federal agencies, so the likelihood of someone trying to deliberately misinform should be considerably lesser. One therefore has to wonder about what the underlying causes of the failure of the market mechanism might be.

I can even understand the majority of the people participating the market not having accurate information. After all they have to use second hand information, whatever the institutions put out, supplemented of course with indirect information. We know people use other sources including heuristics based on their own experience to make investment decisions. However, there are people within the institutions, who are tasked with monitoring the health of their business and ensuring its success. In institution after institution, in all the largest and most venerable names in the industry, was there no indication of what was coming? Or, was there a deliberate attempt to misinform?

Systems as large and complex as the global economy are indeed difficult to completely comprehend. We have heard how, the temporary resolution of this crisis with the rescue package, is not the end of the problem. There are other consequential effects we cannot foresee. Further, these complex systems can often do unpredictable things. Perhaps, that is what happened here, even though in this case I do not completely believe that proposition. Surprise in such complex systems is to be expected. That is why, those of us who need to survive and thrive in these times of ever-growing complexity, have no choice but to make our systems agile, and architect them to be simple and flexible enough to turn around rapidly.

But, what failed here I believe, is a refusal to see things as they were, in addition perhaps to a desire to mislead. The incentives to mislead in certain cases are very significant as we all know. Everyone in positions of responsibility could indeed see what was coming, they just refused to acknowledge their reality. It was the individual and cognitive pathologies of these entities that led us to this mess.

Fixing those is the first step to good foresight. No amount of information or analysis can correct the consequences of cognitive blinders. That is no easy challenge, for you cannot throw technology or money at it. We need to ask deeper questions all across the board. If people who have the best information cannot foresee well, but can find someone to bail them out of a crisis, how well do we think the ordinary person on main street, be able to make good decisions, and who will bail them out should they find themselves in a similar crisis?